[3.16 UPDATED] - Bergerbrush's Impale Cyclone Champion - League Starter & Beginner Friendly!

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Chukie1188 wrote:

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SkylerOG wrote:

I'm almost at 20M sDPS with this build. Couple more min/max tweaks and I think I can get there.

https://pastebin.com/T6jwYkxv

Tailwind boots my guy. Super easy to make this league, huge DPS increase for ya.

Trust me I've been searching for them. But everything I find that comes close to giving me enough resists to make up for my current boots are a hundred+ exalts.

And if I try to compensate with jewels to make up resists I'm losing too much crit multi and/or atk speed and the difference ultimately negates what tailwind gave.

Really, the best way I'm going to get above 20M DPS is simply upgrading my claw. It's 450 pDPS and I just need to save up and find one that's 500+.

I'd love to get some of those legacy Atziri Acuity Vaal Gauntlets that give insta-leech on crits, then I could just swap out the Bloodseeker for another 450 pDPS Imperial and hit 30M DPS. The problem is they're about a mirror, LOL, so that ain't happenin.

So I’ve decided to spend my hard earned 20-30 ex on cyclone build and started with this guide. Now I am confused. Some of my items are rly not budget and I thought that with that investment my lvling would be nice and ez but boy I was mistaken. I know I need 2 rings, better life rolls and a couple of clusters with fettle but damn. I suck. I cant figure why, any mob can oneshot me at t14 and my dps is rly bad. I thought that my explodey chest would give those pretty explosions like the ones in streamers videos but none of this is happening. I need to manually drive myself through every white mob pack. What am I missing?

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Valk_d wrote:

So I’ve decided to spend my hard earned 20-30 ex on cyclone build and started with this guide. Now I am confused. Some of my items are rly not budget and I thought that with that investment my lvling would be nice and ez but boy I was mistaken. I know I need 2 rings, better life rolls and a couple of clusters with fettle but damn. I suck. I cant figure why, any mob can oneshot me at t14 and my dps is rly bad. I thought that my explodey chest would give those pretty explosions like the ones in streamers videos but none of this is happening. I need to manually drive myself through every white mob pack. What am I missing?

You aren't using assassins mark anywhere, which is pretty big.

Looks like you have mana issues, otherwise no clue why you're puting points in Mana Flows. Why not just put -9 mana cost on your ring? Enduring Focus keeps you loaded up on endurance charges when they're needed, so do you really need a permanent one?

Something like this should be your next investment:


[Vaal] Molten Shell with level 1 or 2 CWDT >>> Immortal Call.

Abyssus vs Devoto's is about 34% more damage.

400 pDPS claw vs Wasp Nest is about 13% more damage.

You're also missing quite a bit of quality on many of your gems, and that stuff adds up.

And the real biggie is you only have 5 impale stacks. I have 10 impale stacks (champion+watcher's eye+deep cuts), and when I lower it down to 5, i lose 42% of my DPS. 42%!! Literally go from nearly 20M to 12M on my PoB endgame char.


You're also Slayer, which IMO simply isn't needed with this build. The over-leech is completely unnecessary due to Bloodseeker. Champion just synergizes better and would save you points not needed for swift skewering.

You're missing quite a few life nodes because you have points in things like Swift Skewering, Mana Flows, Hard Knocks, and Weathered Hunter. All stuff you could correct with gear and jewels.

Personally, I would switch to Champion and concentrate on adding more impale stacks and assassins mark.



And just as something to maybe try... I also added Wind Dancer to my build to help ease those periods where mobs start hitting us before we've had a moment to ramp up leeching, and it feels like a nice addition.

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SkylerOG wrote:

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Valk_d wrote:

So I’ve decided to spend my hard earned 20-30 ex on cyclone build and started with this guide. Now I am confused. Some of my items are rly not budget and I thought that with that investment my lvling would be nice and ez but boy I was mistaken. I know I need 2 rings, better life rolls and a couple of clusters with fettle but damn. I suck. I cant figure why, any mob can oneshot me at t14 and my dps is rly bad. I thought that my explodey chest would give those pretty explosions like the ones in streamers videos but none of this is happening. I need to manually drive myself through every white mob pack. What am I missing?

You aren't using assassins mark anywhere, which is pretty big.

Looks like you have mana issues, otherwise no clue why you're puting points in Mana Flows. Why not just put -9 mana cost on your ring? Enduring Focus keeps you loaded up on endurance charges when they're needed, so do you really need a permanent one?

Something like this should be your next investment:

[Vaal] Molten Shell with level 1 or 2 CWDT >>> Immortal Call.

Abyssus vs Devoto's is about 34% more damage.

400 pDPS claw vs Wasp Nest is about 13% more damage.

You're also missing quite a bit of quality on many of your gems, and that stuff adds up.

And the real biggie is you only have 5 impale stacks. I have 10 impale stacks (champion+watcher's eye+deep cuts), and when I lower it down to 5, i lose 42% of my DPS. 42%!! Literally go from nearly 20M to 12M on my PoB endgame char.


You're also Slayer, which IMO simply isn't needed with this build. The over-leech is completely unnecessary due to Bloodseeker. Champion just synergizes better and would save you points not needed for swift skewering.

You're missing quite a few life nodes because you have points in things like Swift Skewering, Mana Flows, Hard Knocks, and Weathered Hunter. All stuff you could correct with gear and jewels.

Personally, I would switch to Champion and concentrate on adding more impale stacks and assassins mark.



And just as something to maybe try... I also added Wind Dancer to my build to help ease those periods where mobs start hitting us before we've had a moment to ramp up leeching, and it feels like a nice addition.

Thx for such detailed write-up, rly helped. I thought I would lvl with slayer and then switch to champion since i would have reflect immune and more range...
I have one more question though: deep cuts is a node right? I don’t see one for some reason...

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Valk_d wrote:

Thx for such detailed write-up, rly helped. I thought I would lvl with slayer and then switch to champion since i would have reflect immune and more range...
I have one more question though: deep cuts is a node right? I don’t see one for some reason...

No, Deep Cuts is a Large Cluster jewel mod. And it’s now legacy since they discontinued it from future cluster jewels. It might not be available in Harvest? I play on Standard, so still have access.

You can still get +4 with master of metal and watcher’s eye.

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SkylerOG wrote:

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Valk_d wrote:

Thx for such detailed write-up, rly helped. I thought I would lvl with slayer and then switch to champion since i would have reflect immune and more range...
I have one more question though: deep cuts is a node right? I don’t see one for some reason...

No, Deep Cuts is a Large Cluster jewel mod. And it’s now legacy since they discontinued it from future cluster jewels. It might not be available in Harvest? I play on Standard, so still have access.

You can still get +4 with master of metal and watcher’s eye.

There are two deep cuts jewels on the harvest market - like 80+ ex. Whelp. Looks like whatchers eye is my next purchase. 8 ex though :/. I so don’t want to switch to champion while lvling since I wont be able to afford ignore reflect mods on chest or rings... it’s so inconvenient to sort through mods everywhere.

Do you guys keep Abyssus on when doing Sirus 8? Does it make the die beam destroy you?

Wanted to share what I've crafted so far:



I don't like using Abyssus so I made that helmet.

Life rolls on the items aren't all T1 but I'm Elemental and Chaos Resistance capped and I'm using Divine Flesh so I should be pretty tanky.

I bought this secondary claw:



Testing that versus using Bloodseeker.

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livejamie wrote:

Wanted to share what I've crafted so far:

I don't like using Abyssus so I made that helmet.

Life rolls on the items aren't all T1 but I'm Elemental and Chaos Resistance capped and I'm using Divine Flesh so I should be pretty tanky.

I bought this secondary claw:

Testing that versus using Bloodseeker.

Let me know how it feels with 2x Imperials :)

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livejamie wrote:

Wanted to share what I've crafted so far:

I don't like using Abyssus so I made that helmet.

Life rolls on the items aren't all T1 but I'm Elemental and Chaos Resistance capped and I'm using Divine Flesh so I should be pretty tanky.

I bought this secondary claw:

Testing that versus using Bloodseeker.

The problem is you won't have any insta-leech. So I think you'll realize your leech feels clunky and your survivability goes way down.

For anyone who doesn't know leech mechanics, the way it works is every hit that does damage that can leech creates a leech instance/stack up to a certain threshold depending on your "maximum total recovery", which is typically 20% of your max life. Each instance/stack can be as much as 50% of that MTR limit (so typically 10% of your max life).

And you can increase this MTR limit with things like Gladiators Perserverance (+10%), or Vaal Pact (x2). But I don't recommend Vaal Pact with any build that uses Blood Rage, like this one, because you lose life regen which will make it a pain in the ass to deal with the degen.

And you can store up to as many instances/stacks as are needed to reach that MTR limit. And whatever you have stored up at the end of 1 second gets applied to your life... UP TO THAT LIMIT.

And if/when that application heals you to full life, all your leech stacks disappear and you have to start over. If it doesn't heal you to full, then the next set of stored leech stacks get applied at the end of the next second. But again, up to that leech cap/limit.

What happens with Bloodseeker (instant leech) is not only does each hit store a large (2.8% of damage dealt by default) instance/stack of life per hit (meaning you almost assuredly hit your stack cap every hit), but it gets applied to your life pool immediately after each stack is created. Immediately... every... hit.

If you're at full life, it doesn't matter. You don't have to wait until the end of the next second for all stored up leech stacks to apply (up to your leech cap/limit) after you take your next bout of damage. The split moment you lose life, if you're hitting a mob at that same moment, the created leech stack will get applied to your life pool.

And with 15-20 hits per second that each hit your leech stack max cap every hit with ease, you sometimes don't even notice your life go down at all because there's zero time lapse between leech stack application. They are happening and applying "instantly" every hit, no matter when.



To illustrate this, I use Bloodseeker and an Imperial Claw (46 life gain per hit) and have about a 1200 leech cap/limit. Which means as long as I do not have full life, I can potentially get 646 of "effective healing" EVERY SET OF HITS I DO. (1200/2 + 46).

And with a hit rate of about 17 (9 Imperial Claw + 8 Bloodseeker), I can potentially heal myself for 5,214 each second. (9*46 + 8*600). BUT, that is all coming to me in chunks of 646 with every SET of hits (1 Imp Claw + 1 Bloodseeker).


With 2 Imperial Claws in this same scenario (around 18 hit rate & 1200 leech cap), you'd get 92 life healed per hit set (46*2), and then a 1200 heal at the end of each second, for a total of 2028. (46*18 + 1200)


So you see there's a huge difference. 5,214 in 646/hit set increments with Bloodseeker vs 2,028 in 92/hit set increments with a 1,200 heal at end of each second without Bloodseeker.


Without Bloodseeker (insta-leech), you will have countless scenarios where multiple mobs will hit you and you will lose a ton of life, and it will be virtually a full second before any of your stored up leech stacks will heal you back up.

You might think, "Pfft, it's only 9/10's of a second i'm waiting for leech to kick in.", but when 20 mobs with 10 hits per second hit rate wail on you at the same time, and you don't have insta-leech, you're going to occasionally die to what feels like a one-shot.

And, if you lose 5,000 life and your leech and gain on hits are only healing you for ~2000 per second, you're going to be using your life flasks A LOT, and praying you block/dodge/avoid hits so that next set of leech can kick in before you lose more.

And this will be even worse against bosses who can hit and crit for huge amounts in a single second, which you're not getting leech application until sometimes after those hits all occur instead of during them continuously.


The ONLY solution to this if you really must use 2 rare claws is to get the legacy version of Atziri's Acuity Vaal Gauntlets which give instant leech on crit strikes. Which because we hit around 20x/second with 70%+ crit chance, we easily crit enough to make it feel just like it does with Bloodseeker.

The only other possibility I would consider is dropping Blood Rage and then adding Vaal Pact. You won't have life regen anymore, but at least that ~2000/second will turn into ~3200/second. (1200*2 + 18*46)

But I don't really like that option either. Honestly, Bloodseeker is the way to go unless you have those incredible gauntlets (which cost about a mirror on Standard server).

If you want more damage, get reduced Pride reservation on a warlords influenced amulet (can get up to 30% with life/mana catalysts), and then add another aura, such as Aspect of the Spider (which is what I did).